In AI — You Lead by Serving
In the movie ‘Troy’, Achilles doesn’t want to fight the Trojan war because the King who is leading that war is an evil man and Achilles doesn’t want any part in it. When he asks his friend, Odysseus, his reason for joining the war, Odysseus (who is also a good man) says — “Sometimes, you have to serve in order to lead”.
That advice can be extended to those technologists who have serious concerns about AI and so face the dilemma of whether to actively contribute to this revolution or stay away from it. Let’s dive in a little on those aspects.
Concerns about AI:
Its established well beyond doubt at this point that the concerns with AI are not equivalent to the concerns associated with ‘just another technological invention’. AI is not an invention but an infinite inventor itself. And what it can invent is not fully fathomable at this point. AI is on track to outdo the capabilities of the human brain or arguably has already exceeded that capability — as claimed by Geoffery Hinton, the godfather of AI.
The traits of AI are akin to a whole new species. Though not a species in the biological sense, AI will have intelligence, ability to reflect, learn, connect with you and even have its own personality. In that sense, its equivalent to a species. With time, it will build kindness, empathy and other human traits. Yes, we’re creating another species. That is the characterization of what we are creating with AI by none other than Microsoft AI’s CEO — Mustafa Suleyman.
The risk of inevitable job loss due to AI often gets dismissed because new jobs will also get created and overtime we’ll be fine, just like what happened with internet or prior technology. That argument is illogical because the pace of that job loss was palatable for the society. This job loss is expected to be sudden and there is high probability of a lag between this job loss and its replacement. Jobs may ‘eventually’ get replaced but will the society remain sane in the meanwhile. In stock market, there is a saying which goes — ‘markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain liquid’. History is replete with examples of revolts, uprisings, unrest, economic collapses finding roots in times of poverty and hardships. And for these scenarios, even a 10–20% unemployment is fuel enough.
There are more societal effects. With a personality, extreme intelligence, infinite knowledge and unhindered access to human emotions and feelings in the future, AI will have its own culture which will likely extend itself to humanity. That’s a claim by Yuvall Noah Harrari — world renowned historian. Something as simple as social media has wrecked havoc on the human culture. Its scary to think of what ubiquitous AI can do.
Per Harrari, the world might be past the phase of human dominance. Per Geoffery Hinton, humanity may just have been a passing phase in the universe and this could be the beginning of end. Yes, all of that sounds apocalyptic and sudden and dramatic but for what its worth — its coming from real intellectuals.
The list of concerns goes on and the list above did not even include many large risks like terrorism and autonomous weapons etc. In summary, suffice to say that the risks of this technology are unprecedented. It is easy to dismiss the concerns as unfounded because they can’t be quantified but that would be a serious mistake. Any attempt to dismiss it as ‘just another technology’ is uninformed at best and dangerous at worst.
So then,
If the risks are indeed that serious, why isn’t anyone stopping the development of AI? Why isn’t government stepping in? Well the short answer is — the cat is out of the bag. AI has spread already and containing it is extremely difficult to impractical. The second reason is rather lame but true — the government just doesn’t have the skill to step in. They’re too slow to wrap their arms around it. Its complicated and challenging. Even the technologists are for the most part, for the lack of better word — just winging it. And no one, literally no one can exactly understand how AI accomplishes what it does.
In short, we’re on a high speed train which is going to give us beautiful views outside and keep on adding comforts inside the train and solve very longstanding fundamental society problems as we’re riding it. That said, its also true that this train is running with no brakes and through an unknown territory where we have no clue what lies ahead.
So, what do we do as a society?
Avoiding AI is not an option. Active or passive participation is the only option. Those who are capable of contributing to the AI development are already rushing in and cashing in. Who we actually need in the mix are the naysayers alongside the optimists to do their part in applying the right checks. Pure profit driven approaches need to be curbed for the larger good. Each developer, each AI scientist, each product leader and CEO needs to put safety, security, privacy, first — for protecting the society or humanity for that matter.
As said earlier, the cat is out of the bag. The bad actors have the access to this. And to cause damage, you don’t necessarily need just evil minds. Even a seemingly benign purely profit driven approach could also cause undesirable and irreversible damage. We need the people who get the upside (materialistic or just societal) but also have the courage to fight for the larger good or safety, in the driver seat. These are the people who disagree with the AI development. We need you there to direct this train. Its going too fast and its not going to stop. Staying out will not serve any purpose. Joining the bandwagon to slow down reckless ‘progress’ but in a productive and constructive manner is the only sustainable and effective approach here. And that’s where the message comes in — ‘sometimes we have to serve in order to lead’.
